James Davis Nicoll

It has some very amusing aspects, not least that one of the attributes all PCs have is "crime".

November 2025 Patreon Boost You too can be one of the legions of James Nicoll Review supporters, financing my slow but steady advance towards review aleph null! With review three thousand in my rear view mirror, a countable infi...

November 2025 Patreon Boost

You too can be one of the legions of James Nicoll Review supporters, financing my slow but steady advance towards review aleph null!

jamesdavisnicoll.com/post/novembe...

Outgunned Adventure by Riccardo​“Rico” Sirignano & Simone Formicola, with art by Daniela Giubellini (October 2024): a woman who is not a gender-swapped Indiana Jones wanders through Mayincatec ruins, no doubt intending to conduct her research in a sensible and ethical manner.

Final cover! Two Little Mice won the number of covers is one higher than a number divisible by four lottery.

Cover, Dreamland by Olivie Blake (August 2026): a hand holding a candle in a bird cage.

Cover, Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey (May 2026): woman in concentric circles.

Cover, Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume Three edited by Stephen Kotowych (October 2025): Implicitly Canadian spaceship flying by an implicitly Canadian space station. All staff are secure in their knowledge they have access to single-payer health care.

Cover, Palaces of the Crow by Ray Nayler (March 2026): plain, placeholder cover.

Books Received, October 25 — October 31

Five works new to me: two horror, one and a half science fiction, one half fantasy, and one TTRPG that's hard to classify. Two could be said to be series works. First four!

jamesdavisnicoll.com/post/books-r...

I have a sleep disorder and any change to my routine is hard to adjust to.

The only time my glasses broke, it was clearly not my fault. The van I was in hit black ice and slammed into the back of a gravel truck. My glasses, which had flown off my face, seemed OK at the time. ~6 months later, dozens of hairline cracks turned into fractures and the frames fell apart.

I am not sure why my parents didn't get around to getting me glasses until I was in grade two, because I'd never not had terrible eyesight. Might have been expense, or just one of their weird parenting decisions.

Anyway, discovering there was stuff written on the blackboard was a revelation.

I wonder how many Republicans are going to Halloween parties as Sexy Guy Who Showed the Nazis Where Anne Frank and Her Family Were Hiding.

Well, I will have to track down her newer stuff.

October 2025 in Review James Nicoll Reviews saw its 3000th review on the 17th, which got me to a career total of 8071 or thereabouts, of which three are listed on ISFDB. October 2025 23 works reviewed. 12.5 by women (54%),...

October 2025 in Review

James Nicoll Reviews saw its 3000th review on the 17th.

23 works reviewed. 12.5 by women (54%), 10 by men (43%), 0.5 by non-binary authors (2%), 0 by authors whose gender is unknown (0%), and 10.5 by POC (46%).

jamesdavisnicoll.com/post/october...

Sorry!

In 1967 I had a great Zorro costume... except the eyeholes were a little small so I spent the evening wandering from house to house effectively blindfolded.

(This was two years before I got glasses, so I would not have seen much anyway)

Fixed.

Ah.

Been Through the Desert 2025’s M. F. K. Volume 1 is the first volume of Nilah Magruder’s M. F. K. secondary-universe middle-grade fantasy. The Confederacy does not inflict heavy-handed nanny-stating on a minor desert town li...

M. F. K., volume 1 by Nilah Magruder

A stranger comes to Little Marigold.

jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/been-...

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(I just remembered the impending time change)

However, Champions had a lot of good ideas about how to tackle the problem of a game where PCs could be anyone from Rich Orphan with Poorly Managed Survivor's Guilt to Vishnu. Which is why a lot of later SHRPGs converge on Championesque ideas...

No ambassador might be better than having Discount Cotton Hill.

I had a Speed 3 brick who was pretty effective... about once every half hour, when he came up on the speed chart.

Which, to be fair, had some curious elements that might strike a player as broken or at least annoying. Arguably, the most glacial combat system of any successful SHTTRPG.

The problem with having stuff shipped to me is convincing the shipping company to actually deliver the parcel rather than sending me endless messages about how it's totally on the truck this time.

(ICS in this case)

Remembering the Wall, there's a chance that the ballroom is completed, sort of, and then collapses due to subpar materials and dodgy construction practices.

These Three Words M. Lucie Chin’s 1988 The Fairy of Ku-She is a stand-alone historical fantasy. It is set in Ming Dynasty China. The Fairy of Ku-She (Ku-She for short) is the guardian of the Golden Chopsticks, which in...

The Fairy of Ku-She by M. Lucie Chin

A fairy's efforts to recover stolen arcane tools via illicit means produce spectacular calamity.

jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/these...

No Champions?

...I still like champions 4e...

Huh. Heroic isn't just still around. It's producing stuff for Champions.

Bundle of Tentacles 7 Investigator! This Bundle of Tentacles 7 is our seventh all-new library of Sanity-shattering tabletop roleplaying ebooks inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos. Illuminate your position in the cosmos with fiv...

Bundle of Holding: Tentacles 7

The seventh all-new library of Sanity-shattering tabletop roleplaying ebooks inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos.

bundleofholding.com/presents/Ten...

YouTube video by Blake Hodgetts - Topic The Great Nebraska Sea

New to me: the song version of The Great Nebraska Sea. Which seems to call for an actual musical.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qok0...

Always Sweet It Sounds 2024’s Touring After the Apocalypse, Volume Six is the sixth tankōbon in Sakae Saito’s post-apocalyptic iyashikei manga. Touring has been serialized in in ASCII Media Works’ seinen manga magazine Deng...

Touring After the Apocalypse, volume 6 by Sakae Saito

What dark purpose compels a girl and her android companion to wander post-apocalyptic Japan?

jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/alway...

Outgunned is an action movie table-top roleplaying game. This suggests to me that the GM could benefit from having in mind specific actors playing the NPCs.

So, who are the best actors to mentally cast as action-movie antagonists?

(Obs they can be living or dead, as they are just templates)